


Baby Diary - Tenth month - Bad Word Baby

by mistressterably



Series: No rest for the wicked [27]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family time, Kids say the darndest things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 16:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11809800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistressterably/pseuds/mistressterably





	Baby Diary - Tenth month - Bad Word Baby

Malcolm was using the quiet morning without the girls to finish up his column for the week. It was ahead of schedule and that was fine by him. He wanted to have Friday free to pick up Mia right from school to go out for a whole family dinner. With Mia at school and Dani off with Gracie for a ‘girls day’ out, Alastair was happy in the front room playing with his blocks so Malcolm locked the baby gates so that the only places the boy could get to would be his office and the front room where Malcolm set more of the boy's toys out on the floor. Not that the lad was attracted to them for the moment.

In his office, Malcolm left the door wide open so he could see right into the front room across the hall. He smiled as Alastair sat and knocked blocks together. When his computer finished booting up, Malcolm loaded up his emails and document editor. He rolled his eyes and sighed as he found himself being copied in on an entire long email chain about setting up a staff dinner out that had everyone replying all to everyone else with days that work, days that don’t, who was declining and who was all for it. Even as he was deleting the older messages a number more were coming in. 

‘Sweet christ alive, this is a load of bollocks.’ Malcolm grumbled as he kept hitting the delete key. ‘How did I wind up on this crap?’ No one was around to answer him. He finally got past the social emails and found the one he was most interested in with information on the column he had been working on. He read over the details of the reports he had asked about and felt himself getting more annoyed. Malcolm was soon realizing that the reports that had been used by the Labour Minister had all been dodgy. 

The more he read of the reports, the more notes he made and the more annoyed he became. ‘These reports should never have made it as far as they did? Someone in the Ministry had dropped the ball on proofing these reports. Simple transcription errors of numbers.’ He rubbed his eyes and began hammering out more of his column. 

Another email came in and Malcolm grunted in annoyance thinking it was another social dinner email. He was about to stab the delete button when he caught the subject header and opened it up. It was a follow up about the reports he’d been writing about and it had a lot of content that kept him focused long enough to not notice that his son had gotten bored of his toys. Alastair had become quite the crawler and had quietly made his way from the front room to the office. 

Malcolm rambled on to himself about the level of errors that were becoming more and more obvious in the press releases. Alastair sat on the floor, unnoticed, but smiling as his father kept talking aloud. He loved listening to his father’s voice. What Alastair also liked to do was mimic his father’s movements so every time Malcolm ran a hand through his hair, the boy ran his hand up to his forehead. As Malcolm stabbed at annoyance at the words on his monitor, Alastair pointed forward with his little fingers. 

‘What the fuck?’ Malcolm got to one paragraph in the report that stunned him. ‘Did these fucking idiots really think that this would not be fucking noticed? This is just fucking ridiculous. To hell with writing a fucking column about Labour figures. I’m writing a fucking column on how fucked up these bastards are prepping these fucking releases. This is just bullshit.’

‘Bu bu!’ Alastair tried repeating Malcolm’s last word but couldn’t quite get the ‘shit’ part formed.

‘Oh my …. ‘ Malcolm groaned loudly. ‘I need to put bells on you to warn me when you’re on the move!’ He got up and lifted his son into his arms. ‘You had better not heard much of that.’

‘Fu.’

‘No, not that. It’s poo. Say poo.’

‘Bu bu.’ Alastair smiled and grabbed for Malcolm’s ear.

‘Poo. Poo.’ Malcolm repeated it in hopes the boy will think only of poo as a word than anything else.

‘Fu!’

Malcolm groaned again. ‘Lad, please do not ever let that go any further. Say poo.’

‘Poo!’ 

‘There you go! That’s good! Poo!’

‘Poo!’ Alastair laughed and mimicked his father.

‘Poo!’ Malcolm sounded relieved. Poo would be cute and wouldn’t get him in any trouble. He sat back at this desk, bobbling his son on his knee as he went back to writing his column.

 

Later that night dinner was more frantic than usual. The girls had all come home at the same time but Mia had to have a bath thanks to a muddy field during their field hockey game at school. It also meant that Dani was busy doing extra laundry. Malcolm, having been caught up writing his column, didn’t start dinner early enough so he was rushing about to get that done. Gracie sat quietly at the table colouring away while Alastair sat in his high chair banging his plastic spoon against the little tray. 

Malcolm finished warming up Alastair’s food just enough and set it down on his high chair tray. ‘Gracie, you think you could be a big sister and help Alastair with his dinner for me?’

‘Sure, daddy.’ She set her crayons down and took Alastair’s spoon from him. ‘Alec wants his dinner?’

‘Ahcee!’ He tried to stick his fingers in the bowl of food but Gracie tugged it away from him.

‘Food in your tummy. Not your fingers.’ She got a spoonful in his mouth and Alastair happily ate.

He finished a few more spoonfuls before he managed to slap his hands on the edge of the bowl to tip it over and spill some on the tray. 

‘Alastair, bad.’ Gracie set the bowl right again.

‘Poo!’ The boy blew a food laden raspberry at his sister spattering a bit of food on his sister.

‘Bad word!’ Gracie scolded her brother. ‘We don’t say bad words here!’

‘Now, Gracie, poo isn’t that bad a word.’ Malcolm tutted, relief in his gut that the boy had used poo.

‘It’s a rude word at the dinner table.’ 

‘What’s going on?’ Dani asked, ushering in a freshly bathed Mia.

‘Poo!’ Alastair smacked his hands on the high chair again.

‘Malcolm, I told you to stop talking about that when you changed him.’

‘Come on, it’s poo. Kids say it all the time.’ Malcolm shrugged. ‘It’s like pee pee.’

‘Daddy!’ Mia went over to him and smacked him as hard as she could on his arm. ‘You have to stop with bad words and rude words. It’s dinner time!’

‘Okay, okay. Not at dinner.’

‘Maybe we should start using the right words at the right times for everyone.’ Dani grabbed a cloth to wipe up Alastair’s mess. ‘And toilet words don’t belong at the dinner table.’ Mia stuck her tongue out at Malcolm in victory. ‘You behave too, Mia.’ Dani shot her daughter a look. 

‘Yes, mommy.’ Mia looked chastened but still managed a look at her father.

Malcolm relaxed as everyone sat and ate, even Alastair was happy to work on getting a fingerful of the last of his mashed vegetables to work on them. He draped an arm around Dani and sat back. ‘Crazy day but we made it through.’

‘You get the column done like you wanted?’ Dani asked.

‘Almost. I was thinking I might work on it later when the kids are asleep.’

‘You used to say I was a workaholic now who is?’

‘All for a certain day out.’ Malcolm winked at his wife.

‘Fu!’ Alastair randomly shouted with a smack of his hands on the high chair. 

‘Aren’t you using more sounds now.’ Dani smiled at her son. ‘Still more first sounds than full words.’

‘I read to him all the time.’ Mia said. ‘He tries at times.’

‘He’ll make it soon enough. Bet he turns into a chatterbox like Mia.’

‘What’s a chatterbox?’ Mia asked, not recognizing the word.

‘It’s someone who talks a lot.’ Malcolm teased. ‘When you were Alastair’s age you just talked and talked and talked.’

‘I did?’

‘Malcolm, you’re teasing your daughter.’

‘Come here, lass.’ Malcolm gestured to the girl and she came over, giggling as he lifted her up onto his lap. He hugged her close. ‘Don’t ever stop talking, lass. Your sister and brother learn a lot from you.’

‘Fuck!’ Alastair interrupted loudly and proudly beaming at his word.

Dani froze and slowly turned to Malcolm. The blood drained from Malcolm’s face.

‘Daddy!’ Mia and Gracie were both quick to voice their displeasure. Mia, on his lap, smacked him hard again. ‘You said a very bad word!’

‘I didn’t say it.. Alastair did!’ He protested.

‘You said it around him! You promised you never would!’

‘I…’ Malcolm floundered.

‘Daddy.’ Gracie scowled at him. ‘We can’t leave you alone with Alastair now.’

‘It was just once..’ 

Dani got up, still silent, and picked up Alastair. ‘Girls, let’s go upstairs and get ready for bed. Daddy’s going to clean up tonight on his own.’

They all left him to his own thoughts. ‘Fuck.’ He muttered under his breath.

The girls and Dani were upstairs going through the regular nightly routine of cleaning up and reading. Malcolm worked on cleaning up the dishes and the kitchen. By the time he finished, he went up the stairs and stopped halfway. He could hear Mia reading aloud to Gracie and Alastair while Dani added in the occasional background sound. He sat down on the steps and just listened to them. He couldn’t bear to go upstairs just yet. When the reading aloud stopped and he could hear them saying goodnight, Malcolm got up and retreated back down the stairs until he was in his office.

No one came down to say goodnight to him so he left it at that. One thing everyone always went on about was to never go to bed mad so the last thing he wanted to do was go up to the bedroom and cause an argument. He knew when she was this quiet that it wouldn’t take long to trigger Dani. Instead, he rummaged the picnic blanket out of the back closet and curled up his long legs on the front couch.

 

‘Good morning, Malcolm.’ Dani stood over him early enough in the morning to be up before either of the girls. She carried a half-asleep Alastair on her hip. 

Malcolm groaned a little as he opened his eyes and stretched out the kinks in his back and shoulders. ‘Morning, love.’

‘Didn’t sleep well?’

‘Deservedly so.’ 

‘Very true. Shuffle over.’

Malcolm did as he was told and moved over so that she could sit beside him. Alastair rubbed at his eyes, trying to wake himself up. Malcolm steeled himself. ‘I’m sorry. There is no excuse for what I did.’

‘There isn’t.’ Dani agreed.

‘I let you down, Dani. Again. I promised you I’d never curse in the presence of the kids and I broke that promise.’ Malcolm turned sideways to face her and their son. ‘I’m not going to do that again. I’m not going to make a promise to you that I can’t 100 per cent keep.’ He reached over and rested a hand on her cheek. ‘What I will do is say that I will try as hard as I can to never do this again.’

Dani didn’t respond at first but just held his gaze and only paying half attention to Alastair’s hand tugging on her hair. Slowly, she moved her one hand from Alastair to rest it on top of Malcolm’s. ‘I think that you’ll try hard enough, Malcolm. Apology accepted.’

‘Thank you, my love.’ Malcolm leaned close and kissed her softly. He was pleased when she responded just as eagerly. 

‘Ma ma.’ Alastair leaned in close to them both wanting to get in on the kissing too. ‘Da da.’ 

The parents laughed at the young boy’s attempts to kiss them. The tense mood was definitely broken now and Dani kissed her son on the cheek then Malcolm on his. ‘Don’t let this happen again, Mister Tucker. The bed is awfully empty and cold without you there.’

‘Now that is the greatest motivation.’ Malcolm agreed. ‘Bacon and eggs for breakfast, my dearest loving wife. Just the way you like them.’

‘And kitty cats for the girls. You owe them too.’

‘Of course!’


End file.
